How do I add more characters into my story?
I am new to the site, so please let me know if I'm not following proper format or etiquette.
I am beginning a story (only 4,000 words so far). I am having trouble adding in characters that can be developed, because the protagonist doesn't really have friends, just people she smokes with, and she isn't close with her family.
The loneliness she feels and the amounts of time she spends lost in her head are integral to the story, but are making it hard for me to add other characters that I can develop past being two-dimensional.
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If her loneliness is essential to the story, I don't see this as being a problem. You don't need to add a huge cast of well-rounded characters just to have them. In fact, I think that this might end up serving your story quite well, as long as it's executed well. If it's made clear, somehow, that the main character is isolating herself, or somehow that her perceptions of the characters around her are one-dimensional, I think it would absolutely end up improving your story.
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One doesn't have to be alone to be lonely.
One can have 1000 facebook friends and not have a real friend. In fact the more facebook friend one has, the lonelier one is likely to be. It is a sign of a desperate need to connect.
One can pack one's schedule with parties, outings, and meetups and yet be totally alone.
After all, why do you think your main character is lonely?
Loneliness is a feeling that comes from mainly 2 things: 1) the desire to connect and the inability to do so, and 2) the feeling of envy of those who have formed those connections.
With that in mind, you can introduce a TON of characters.
And those characters can actually help you flesh out her feeling of isolation.
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Have parts of the story be in the point of view of characters you add, not just your main character. This way, you can show how the character thinks as well as act, and you can expand upon your current characters by having the added character express their opinion of them, whether in thoughts or aloud.
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Are you writing this in first person? The choice of first person is the cause of many writing woes because it is a POV that essentially puts the writer in a box. If you are writing first person and your protagonist is withdrawn and friendless, any people she meets are going to be two dimensional to her, and thus two dimensional to the reader as well, since the reader can only see them through her eyes.
Now, this might be a legitimate way to tell her story. The characters do not become three dimensional to us until she reaches some epiphany and they become three dimensional to her.
But if that is not what you want to do, then write in the third person. The difficulty goes away at once because not you can turn the narrator's focus, and thus the reader's attention, to the secondary characters and make them as lively and well rounded as you like.
Half the help-I'm-stuck questions on this site come down to the author having made choices about POV that don't fit with the story they are trying to tell, so I am guessing that is the case here too. If not, please clarify your question and I will update the answer accordingly.
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